It's a good question. We have seen that the cod stock increased tremendously after the year 2000 and up to 2015. Now it is reducing again. Of course, the answer for why this happens is much more complicated than relating it just to seals. It also has to do with good and bad year classes of the cod.
What we have seen primarily in our area is that there has been a severe reduction in the hunting of harp seals in the west ice and east ice, so one should expect that these populations have grown. We haven't seen very clear signs of that. We have, in fact, seen some reduction in pup production, especially in the White Sea population.
We don't see very many harp seals feeding on cod, but we think there is some sort of competition between cod and seals, and also with whales. In the Barents Sea area, cod, harp seals and minke whales are the prime top predators. I think they are more competitors than predators of each other.